The Study Of Basic Color Words In Modern Chinese

Color words, a kind of words that are categorized according to their concepts, are usually used to depict the colors of various objects in the world. The research on color words has long been a topic that attracts many researchers'interest in different fields, and they also have been investigated and explored in linguistics. In this paper, the basic color words are the research focus. According semantic and pragmatic theory, the basis color words in modern Chinese are analyzed systematically using the inductive and enumerating methods.The paper consists of three parts:In the first part, the basic color words in modern Chinese are defined and categorized. Basing on the previous literatures, the basic color words in modern Chinese are defined as white, black, red, yellow, green, blue, violet and grey according to BERLIN and KAY's classical theory of color words. Then, taking the eight basic color words as semantic field, the hypogyny words in basic color words are classified and the word formation of hypogyny words is analyzed.In the second part, the cultural meaning of the eight basic color words are discussed, as well as details on their semantic characteristics and semantic sources.The third part is the conclusion and induction of this paper.